Yesterday I began giving my suggestions as to what can be done to encourage those who have left the Catholic Church to return home. Today I would like to pick this back up again…
5. Don’t be a Ninja Catholic
The ninjas of Japan were known for their stealth, their ability to go unnoticed. In fact, there were many legends circulated that they could even make themselves invisible. Don’t imitate ninjas in this regard!
What do I mean by this? Don’t be ashamed to be identified as Catholic. It may be as simple as praying before meals, wearing a cross or talking with your friends about parish life.
“Let your light so shine before men…” – Matthew 5:16
How will someone ask you about your faith if they don’t even know you’re a Christian?!
On 11th June 2010, I posted my first article on this blog. As hard as it is to imagine, that was ten years ago…
I began with a free WordPress blog over at thisrestlesspilgrim.wordpress.com, and then I upgraded to get my own domain. I started posting once or twice a week, but after a few months committed to publishing something every day. To date, I have posted a little over 3,600 posts…
Well, today things come to an end. As you may know, in a few months I’ll be getting married and entering a new phase of life. In light of this, while will still from time-to-time still write articles, I’ve decided to stop posting here every day. Since today is my birthday, it seemed like a good day to draw things to a close.
This new chapter in my life will require my full attention…and it’s going to be great 🙂
In the early part of his talk, Dr. Barber discussed the question of authorship of the Gospel. He mentioned how modern sceptical scholars often say that the Gospel was originally anonymous, and that the text “The Gospel according to John” was a later addition. I have often heard claims such as these, so I was delighted to hear Dr. Barber present some potential problems with this position…
The main issue in asserting that the Gospel was original anonymous is that the manuscript evidence does not support this hypothesis at all. Where the manuscripts survive, we find the text present. Not only that, there are some other problems which flow from this…
If the original Gospel was anonymous and the association with St. John was a later development, why don’t we find divergent attributions? Since St. John is not identified as the author within the narrative itself, surely one would expect many divergent attributions to develop? Why was the Gospel never associated with, say, St. Peter? The obvious answer is that the text “The Gospel according to John” was in there from the beginning.
If the sceptics are right, the text had been copied as an anonymous Gospel and distributed throughout the Empire. Why is it that manuscripts from all these different regions bear the text claiming Johannine authorship? It would have been an impossible task to gather up all these different manuscripts retrospectively in order to “fix” them with an agreed-upon author, particularly since they were in different languages (Greek, Latin etc). Once again, the simplest explanation for consistency in all these manuscripts in all these areas in all these languages is simply that the text “The Gospel according to John” was in there from the beginning.
These reasons, coupled with the universal testimony of the Early Church Fathers, should give us great confidence that, from the very beginning, this Gospel opened with the words “The Gospel according to John…”
The other day a friend of mine sent me a text message saying her coworker was mourning. It was the anniversary of her husband’s death in Afghanistan. Her coworker was asking the question: “Why would God let this happen?”. My friend asked “What should I say?”. Here’s the text message I wrote in reply:
I would say something like “I could talk about some of the different reasons why bad things happen to good people (fallen world, free will, sinful man, God’s plan etc.), but the truth is I don’t know… None of us fully comprehends why terrible things like this happen.
What I do know is that God is the expert at drawing good out of bad, bringing healing out of pain. When Jesus hung on the cross it looked to the world like defeat, but out of the cross came victory over death so Jesus endured it for love of the world.
Your husband, no doubt, joined the military because he thought that it was the right thing to do, to protect the country and people he loved. Jesus did the same.
I can’t explain specifically WHY your husband died, but I CAN say that, if Jesus’ death shows us anything, it’s that suffering is not meaningless and that great acts of love and sacrifice can change the world”
When we encounter someone who is suffering, there is always the temptation to talk about big theological concepts of God’s will, His sovereignty and the fallen nature of humanity. However, in my experience, when people are suffering, this kind of talk is neither helpful nor comforting. We can only point them to the Cross. Apart from the Cross, suffering has no meaning or purpose.
Even then, words are often ineffective. Actions speak much louder. When someone is suffering and I don’t know what to say, there’s a temptation to just avoid that person since I can’t “do” anything. We must fight that temptation! Sometimes all I really need to do is just show up. Be there for my friend. Listen to her. Cry with her. Pray with her. If that person is English, make a cup of tea 🙂
The presence of a friend during a time of suffering speaks much more loudly of the love of God than any words ever could. Love them like Jesus.
Back in 2017 I was an avid listener to Buffering the Vampire Slayer, a podcast where the hosts would discuss each episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in turn. As a teenager I had rather enjoyed the campy movie starring Kirsty Swanson and, although I was suspicious at first, I soon came to really enjoy the TV series starring Sarah Michelle Gueller.
Buffering Mail…
I listened to the first few episodes of the Buffering the Vampire Slayer while I was walking the Camino, and I even sent them an email which they read out on the show. I eventually wrote to them again, this time after listening to Episode 3.08…
In that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there is a funeral. In their commentary episode, the podcast hosts where shocked to hear the word “Hades” mentioned in the reading at the graveside. They were shocked because the context was clearly Christian, yet the hosts associated the word with the occult. They wondered out loud what Christian denomination this might be.
To the library!
I sent them an email pointing out that the text comes from the first chapter of the Book of Wisdom, also known as The Wisdom of Solomon:
“…because God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things that they might exist, and the generative forces of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them; and the dominion of Hades is not on earth. For righteousness is immortal”
Wisdom of Solomon 1:13–15
I went on and explained that the word “Hades” was simply the Greek name used to describe the realm of the dead. In Hebrew, the word is “Sheol” which is translated in English as either “the grave” or “the dead”.
The fact that this reading comes from the Book of Wisdom gives us a big clue as to the Christian denomination of the person conducting the burial. The Wisdom of Solomon belongs to a collection of books known as the Deuterocanon which was removed from the Bible at the Reformation in the 16th Century. It therefore most likely isn’t a Protestant funeral (Lutheran, Baptist etc.). That pretty much leaves either Catholic or Eastern Orthodox and, given the appearance of the priest, I’d say he it’s a pretty safe bet to assume he was Catholic.
Here’s the clip of the hosts reading out my email on their mailbag episode:
This week I heard a talk on the Gospel of John by 
The other day a friend of mine sent me a text message saying her coworker was mourning. It was the anniversary of her husband’s death in Afghanistan. Her coworker was asking the question: 
